Bohemian Crapsody: W’m’sburg Blogger Assails Whippersnappers

August 20, 2008

Via Gowanus Lounge we are alerted to this epic tirade by Bad Advice against the newer, shoddier breed of hipster. The focus of her wrath is the crowd at “douche magnet” Royal Oak on Union Avenue. The Voice has described as a place where “sporadic dancing breaks out when DJs follow Bon Jovias Livin’ on a Prayer with hits by Kiss and Missy Elliott,” and that sounds bad enough, but BA is more exercised by the patrons’ tendency to “‘woo’ once they have a drink or ten,” and, more to the point, their general shallowness and self-satisfied stupidity.

“These days, when I sit next to an earnest couple discussing their shared passion for Derrida and Galouis ciggies, I feel not derision, but nostalgia,” says Bad Advice. “These new kids don’t read books so much as collect them as conversation pieces. The women tend to work in PR and the dudes work in tech.”

Gowanus Lounge applauds the “rant,” but that term kind of reduces it. Bad Advice is taking her place in a long line of jaded Bohemians who have found, to their disgust, that the new breed of hipster, or hep-cat, or flapper or what-have-you doesn’t come up to the exalted standards she and her comrades met Back in the Day.

Which is no doubt true, and worth a knock or two, especially as eloquently as BA makes them. But the only meaningful response to disenchantment with hipsters is to abandon hipsterism oneself, entirely — lose one’s MySpacial profile pic and all interest in trends, and embrace the Zen of fogeydom. Who among us has that kind of guts?